Product details

The Music of the Fourteenth Century Series presents some of the earliest and most significant polyphonic settings of the lyric poetry of the late middle ages.

A team of musicologists, literary scholars and performers from Melbourne University and La Trobe University and the Australian Research Council, under the direction of John Stinson and John Griffiths, have collaborated to research and interpret works by principal composers and from the central collections of the fourteenth century. The musical sources of France and Italy in the age of Machaut, Petrarch and Boccaccio include some 1500 works, most of which have never been available on recordings.

In addition to the restoration, research and interpretation of important manuscripts, software developed for the project is currently used in over 30 universities around the world.

The Ensemble of the Fourteenth Century and Les Six are collectives of specialist singers and instrumentalists brought together for the Fourteenth Century Recording Project. Essentially formed around the leading mediaeval ensemble La Romanesca, which has been expanded to provide the varied instrumental and vocal combinations required by the repertory.

1997 marks the 600th anniversary of Francesco Landini's death.

Landini was a poet, polemicist and performing musician whose fame even during his lifetime was equal to that of the greatest artistic figures of his century.

There are many contemporary and near-contemporary accounts of Landini's fame, some attributing him with an almost mythical status. However it is his surviving music manuscripts that reveal the most about Landini, the musician. The music of Francesco Landini is the kernel of every surviving manuscript which documents the music of fourteenth century Italy. However, even now 600 years after Landini's death, less than half his works have been recorded.

This collection presents twelve works not previously recorded as well as fresh readings from some of his most famous works. Most of the madrigals and ballatas featured on this disc deal with love, ranging from the most extroverted manifestations of love to poems of a more contemplative mood, others contain abstract and philosophical ideas pertinent to the time.

Press Quotes

“Editor's Choice”

— Soundscapes, Oct-Nov 1997

“... an excellent thoughtful and committed recording ... if you like the sounds of mediæval two and three part polyphony, this CD is a worthy investment. If you don't, get it anyway; this recording may convert you.”

— Early Music News, NSW

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